Wootric Blog

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Customer Survey Statistics: Everything You Need to Know

All types of businesses leverage customer surveys, and they’re as important for small, growing businesses as they are for established corporations. When you’re creating a customer survey, whether it’s for the first time, or something you do each year, it’s helpful to understand what to expect. What is a good survey response rate? What are best practices for customer surveys? What is the competition encountering?

We’ve collected customer survey statistics to help you understand the customer survey landscape. Whether you send out a standard survey via email or leverage the Net Promoter Score question in-app, knowing some statistics and trends can help you ensure that you get adequate feedback that helps build your business.

Hearing from Customers

The average business hears from 4% of its dissatisfied customers. (Source: “Understanding Customers” by Ruby Newell-Legner via Help Scout)

For every customer who complains to a business, 26 other customers don’t voice their feelings. (Source: White House Office of Consumer Affairs via Help Scout)

The Power of a Good Customer Experience

An improved customer experience directly affects the bottom line. For a $10 billion company, a modest shift in customer experience can result in $116 million reduction in churn and $103 million from word of mouth marketing. (Source: Forrester)

40% of customers start buying from a competitor because of their reputation for great customer service. (Source: Zendesk)

55% of consumers have intended to make a purchase, but backed out because of poor customer service. (Source: American Express)

86% of people are willing to pay up to 25% more for a better customer experience. (Source: RightNow)

Asking for Feedback via Customer Surveys Statistics

Monday is the best day to get the highest amount of complete email surveys for B2B businesses. (Source: CheckMarket).

For B2C companies, there is not a best day to send surveys: Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays all lead to a relative high response rates and Thursdays and Sundays can better be avoided. (Source: CheckMarket and SurveyMonkey)

The average response rate for email surveys is roughly 24.8%, according to a calculation by FluidSurveys.

The average response rate for telephone surveys are in the 8-12% range (Source: FluidSurveys)

Response rates can soar past85% when the respondent population is motivated and the survey is well-executed. (Source: SurveyGizmo)

Response rates can also fall below 2% when the respondent population is less-targeted, when contact information is unreliable, or where there is less incentive or little motivation to respond. (Source: SurveyGizmo)

Best practice is to keep your survey as short as possible. Data suggests that if a respondent begins answering a survey, there is a sharp increase in drop-off rate that occurs with each additional question up to 15 questions. (Source: SurveyMonkey)

Responding to Feedback Statistics

It takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience. (Source: “Understanding Customers” by Ruby Newell-Legner via Help Scout)

Resolve a complaint in the customer’s favor and they will do business with you again 70% of the time. (Source: Lee Resources)

Net Promoter Score (NPS) Survey Statistics & Benchmarks

Entelo saw 2x response rate using in-app NPS surveys versus email. For example, when Entelo, a recruiting software, first began to use in-app NPS survey, their response rate quickly jumped from around 24 percent to around 60 percent, before leveling off at about 50 percent. (Source: Wootric)

Fortune 500 companies such as Delta Air Lines, General Motors, Zappos, Lego, and Procter & Gamble all use NPS to help gauge customer happiness. (Source: Net Promoter System)

Survey Statistics for the Best Possible Feedback

Understanding survey statistics and trends can help you get the best possible feedback from your customers, which can help you grow your business. Customer feedback can help improve your processes, decide on new features or products, and ultimately boost customer happiness.